


Trials and Tribulations

by penscritch



Series: Wizardess Heart collection [9]
Category: Shall We Date?: Wizardess Heart+
Genre: Friendship, Gen, mentioned Klaus Goldstein/MC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 03:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5189714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penscritch/pseuds/penscritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elias is depressed. Lena gives him a helping hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trials and Tribulations

**Author's Note:**

> For jambajunkie’s friendship gen-fic prompt. Also, there might be typos. I finished this as part of my I AM FREEEEE writerly glee.
> 
> (that isn't to say typos won't be eventually tracked down and smushed. They will be when I get around to it... after I stop binge-writing...)

Elias sat at his customary seat in the library, stacks of books towering around him like a barricade.

Lena winced.

“Hey, Elias,” she said. He didn’t respond.

“…Um, Elias?” When there was no reaction, she tentatively poked his shoulder.

“What?” he said automatically, jerking up. Then he saw Lena and his shoulders relaxed. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Mind if I sit here?”

He shrugged, so she took that as a yes. Lena pulled out a chair and plopped down. When she looked at him again, he’d turned his eyes back to the open book on the table but his heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t even reading it, just staring blankly at the pages with a bleakness that made her heart twinge in sympathy.

Lena thought of some of the hurt animals she’d taken care of as the village wizardess. Gently, she said, “Elias, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

Elias sighed. “What do you mean? It’s my mistake that got me such a bad grade. I was the one who made that mirror for the project, and it’s not like Professor Schuyler was the one grading it. It was Professor Merkulova.”           

Lena winced again. That’s right. Professor Merkulova was a really nice person and he definitely wasn’t the type to grade unfairly. Come to think of it, Professor Schuyler might have been better, even if he was really strict. He didn’t ask for creativity in his classes as much as accuracy, though he often complained about the lack of it.

“You had a good idea. I liked it a lot. I thought it was really cool how the mirror could store everything from the encyclopedia and you could pull it up anytime you wanted.”

“But I wasn’t creative enough,” Elias said. “Even you got a better grade than I did.”

That… was true. Amazingly, she’d gotten a full score this time. Klaus always said that Elias’ problem was creativity, and he was right. Elias knew he was right too. But that wasn’t the problem. It was more that Elias didn’t really understand what being creative meant. He saw examples of it, sure, but he didn’t _understand_.

To be honest, Lena didn’t really understand either. Klaus had never complained that she wasn’t creative, only that she wasn’t disciplined enough. One time he’d even teased her about being _too_ creative, what with all the magical accidents she kept getting into.

But this was important to Elias, so she tried to think about it in a way that would help him. What would it be like for her if she did everything as textbook-perfect as Elias? To know so clearly that there was a right and wrong for magic?

And she had her answer.

“Elias, what do you think about magic?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what’s the first thing you think of when you think about magic?”

Elias rubbed his chin. “It’s… perfection, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be perfect, or you wouldn’t be able to get the most potential out of it for whatever you do.”

She smiled. “That’s not wrong, but it’s not completely right either. See, when I think about magic, I think about what I can do with it. I’d like for it to come out okay, but I don’t think about making it perfect. I’m always excited to see what new things I can learn or come up with to do with it.”

She racked her brain for a good example. “Hmmm. I know!” Lena clapped her hands. “Okay, so there was this one time I found a healing spell for fixing broken bones. I’m the only wizard at my village, so they relied on me for stuff like that a lot. I wasn’t very good on using them on people, but I’m good with animals. I wanted to be able to do it well on animals at least, right away, so I kept practicing it on this broken branch.”

Lena grinned at the look on Elias’ face. “Yup, I know. I didn’t know then that it was supposed to be impossible to fix a branch with that spell. It’s supposed to only work with bones. But I was so excited that I skipped right over the part saying it wasn’t possible with anything other than bones. And later, when I learned it was supposed to be impossible, I was able to figure out why it was possible. See, trees are alive just like people and animals. That spell works with anything that’s alive and has something hard in its body that’s broken. Rocks don’t work because they’re not alive.”

“I see…” Elias nodded seriously. “So it’s not good to have assumptions and it’s better to test everything out for myself. Right?”

“Only if it’s reasonable!” she reminded him. “Or you end up getting yelled at by Klaus too, like me.” She grinned sheepishly. “And I think it’ll be good if you can do something just because you like it. Not because you need to be perfect.”

Elias nodded again. Lena had a good point. He loved magic, he really did, but somewhere along the way he’d forgotten how to have fun. He’d forgotten how to do things just because he’d wanted to, without a thought for whether or not it was possible.

Though as Lena kindly pointed out, in moderation. He didn’t want to be yelled at by his brother either.

“Come on,” Lena said, standing up from her seat and gesturing him to do the same. “There’s someone I want you to meet who’s _really_ creative. I think you can learn a lot from him. Even Klaus recognizes him.”

“Really?” Elias said, surprised. “My brother?”

“Yeah,” she said, a bit of humor crossing her expression. Peeking around as though to impart some great secret, she whispered to him, “Klaus says he’s his rival.”

“Wow,” Elias managed. His infamous brother? Recognizing someone as his rival?!

Then he caught himself when he saw the time marked by the grandfather clock. “But, wait. Aren’t you supposed to be meeting my brother around now?”

“Oh…” Lena deflated a little, but perked up again. “It’s okay.”

“Really?”

Lena nodded firmly, an uncharacteristic fire in her eyes. “He’ll understand.”

She was a very gentle person, but at times like this Elias could see how she could be a match for his brother.

Elias looked down at his book. It was still open to the same page it had been for the past hour.

He shut it decisively, and stood.

“Lead on,” he said, and followed his friend out of the library and into the warm sunshine outside.

**Author's Note:**

> The MC drags Elias to Randy (AKA Serge). It’s very informative and Elias is somewhat mentally scarred. He did not know there were so many different applications for candy-based magic. On the plus side, he’s happier now since he has a more concrete idea of how to improve himself.
> 
> Klaus gets told off a bit by the MC regarding Elias. It goes something along the lines of:
> 
> MC: Klaus, I must have a word with you!  
> Klaus: Oh? *busy marking paperwork* And you’re late.  
> MC: _Darling_.  
>  Klaus: *feels alarmed and looks up*  
> MC: You really are too harsh on Elias sometimes. What you say is true but the poor boy doesn’t get it. Use smaller, nicer words to explain. Or else.  
> Klaus: …Yes, dear.
> 
> When Elias drops by Klaus’ office the next day, he’s nearly shocked out of his wits when Klaus gives him a brief apology for his “incorrect approach.” Klaus (following the MC’s advice) tells Elias that failure isn’t a bad thing. Klaus also makes mistakes, it’s just that Elias hasn’t seen them. Also, that Elias should take this an opportunity to grow. He already has a good foundation for his magic – all he needs to do now is to try out different things. Anything, really, and learn to define himself as himself.
> 
> Elias comes away really heartened and begins to explore whatever takes his fancy. Some of it is really uncharacteristic like how to make a magical toy, and some more practical like how a magic-enforced building constructed and warded. Anyway, he enjoys himself. That’s the important part. He also gets (slightly) less obsessed about his grades.


End file.
